Ludger’s Debt In Tales of Xillia 2 Is Meant To Ease You Into The Game

In Tales of Xillia 2, Ludger is burdened with a debt of 20 million Gald, which he owes another character, Redau, for saving his life. This debt serves a purpose beyond simply making you undertake quests and collect money—it’s also how Tales of Xillia limits how much of the map you can explore.

As you gradually pay your debt off with the help of Nova, a former classmate of Ludger’s, you unlock additional parts of the map. Bandai Namco’s Dennis Lee (Product Manager) and Ted Tsung (Producer) said to Siliconera that this restriction is meant to ease the player into Tales of Xillia 2’s world.

As you unlock more areas, you can accept jobs in different towns, encompassing the usual fetch quests like item retrieval and gathering, as well as hunting and social quests.

In Xillia 2, All of the returning characters from the original Tales of Xillia have devoted story episodes. These can be completed at any pace throughout the game, and Namco claim that it could take as long as 20 hours to clear them all.

Tales of Xillia 2 will be available this August in North America and Europe.

As a longtime Tales of fan (as most people on this site are) and someone played the Japanese version of X2, I don’t find that the debt system served this purpose very well.

As long as you take on any sidequests / character episodes that pop up after each story chapter, you’ll never be short on Gald, so it basically just ends up being an annoying gate between you and the next chapter.

Crevox

Pretty much. The game’s formula is:

Story Chapter -> Grind tons of sidequests until you pay at least x amount of gald -> Allowed to do next story chapter

This process repeats until the end of the game.

andref

So how is it explained in the game? Even before seeing what you have said about it, I can’t imagine how one’s debt could realistically prevent him from going beyond a particular area of the map

Crevox

Nova wants x amount of payments every so often, which just happens to line up with after every story mission. After you pay off what she wants, you get a phone call from whoever telling you “something happened”, or “we need to meet up”, whatever it may be, which leads into the next story mission.

Basically, it just so happens that when you finish paying off the current payment, the characters in the game are ready to move forward with the story. If you continue to pay extra, you just work off the debt, and for every x amount of gald you pay towards the debt that isn’t required by the story, you get free items (arte books, friendship potions, etc).

In addition, if you try to hoard gald and NOT pay off the debt, the game will forcefully stick the payment screen in your face and require you to pay X amount to close it, so you can never have too much gald at once.

andref

Ok, thanks for the explanation.

Land of Green Pasture

isn’t 20 hours kinda too short? never actually played any tales beside Innocence, and it alone took me 30+ hours…

ZEROthefirst

They’re claiming along the lines of finishing off Ludger’s debt within 20 hours and having the entire map opened up to you… at least that’s what I’ll assume they’re meaning.

Arrei

No, it’s saying the character side quests are up to 20 hours of content by themselves. Every cast member from the first Xillia has sidequests that delve into what they’ve been up to since the last game. I don’t know why that mostly unrelated line was tacked onto the end of this article, to be honest.

ZEROthefirst

Yeah I didn’t notice that part. Because of Siliconera’s layout with the text on articles like this, I tend to ignore the last sentence or 2 because it’s usually the “this game will be released at such and such time” and I assumed that was the same thing but obviously it wasn’t lol.

Jesse

I think they’re referring to the story episodes taking ~20 hours. ^^;

Crevox

The character episodes take up to 20 hours, not the actual game. The character episodes are a lot of cutscenes, travel, and occasional event battles.

Kroz

Most Tales games (at least for my playthroughs) are around 60 hours give or take a few. Then again I try to do a lot of sidequests and stuff. I know for sure Graces took me 80 hours on my first run through.

mojack411

“encompassing the usual fetch quests like item retrieval and gathering, as well as hunting and social quests.”
I really don’t like the sound of that. Sounds monotonous and repetitive as hell.

Jirin

Wait, you mean you’re forced to do fetch quests to even progress in the game? There’s nothing less fun in RPGs than interchangeable quests like “Collect item drops from specific enemy” or “Kill X of this enemy” or “Kill this enemy that’s slightly stronger than other similar enemies.” Those are the padding/filler content so gamers can choose to make 20 hour games last 80 hours if they prefer and so people have something to do while they grind. And you’re FORCED to do them?

I’m more and more leaning toward skipping ToX2 so I’m not tired of Tales with ToH and ToZ come out.

Kumiko Akimoto

Because there aren’t quest like that in tales already

Derek

you are not forced actually, progressing throu the story gives you enough gald to pay to advance, and most of the time you get enough gald to upgrade your equipment

also, certain missions are really fun, for example, fighting the gigantos (they give more than enough gald to advace and buy stuff)

however, there are certain things you can get throu paying the debt (for example, different clothes for characters)

Lynx

Just hunt down the Giganto monsters. You don’t need to do any quests aside from the ones that you can get on your way normally through the game.

That’s what I did in my Japanese version playthrough.

Ladius

Lots of this game’s optional contents seems to be actually story related, like the character quests focused on each party member’s development.

Ms_Fortune

That doesn’t make any sense, Tales hasn’t limited where I can go before, why start now?

TheSkyWalker

As far as i understood, the “debt system” is exclusive to this game, like the monster breeding system in ToS sequel.

Vanadise

They’ve always limited where you could go; the difference here is that the limit is usually a character stopping you and saying “You can’t go this way yet!”, or running into a natural barrier that you need a new vehicle to get past.

MrTyrant

Storywise the debt system worked so well in SRW Z2 when the main character has to use actual money to power up his mech lel

It really shouldn’t. Even though the game regularly saps away your money, you never find yourself thinking that you’d NEED some new weapon to help you in combat or more gels or something and, even when the game eats away your money, you’re still left with just the right amount you need. The game also has a ton of sidequests or ‘jobs’ that can earn you a ton of cash, so it never feels like busy work.

https://twitter.com/RaiohV Raioh

People making too much of a big deal out of nothing. You’ll basically always have enough money to pay the debt, it doesn’t break the immersion into the story at all. Paying off the debt also gives you lots of bonuses so it’s not like you won’t want to do it~

The only annoying part of this is Nova popping up whenever you have enough money for the next payment~

Derek

i think this could be a spoiler, not related to it’s story actually, but you can finish the game without paying a huge amount of gald

i finished the game by paying a minimal amount of it, yeah, i missed a lot of unlockable things by not paying the whole debt, but you can finish the first playthrough without paying the whole amount

The second playthrough, however, allows you to pay the whole debt and complete the game, thanks to the grade shop (you get grade in the same way as X1)

Also, you never run out of money, missions give you a lot of money, i actually never missed importand weapons/upgrades because i had no gald (i missed some others but because i did not find certain treasure chests)

MrJechgo

Do yourself a favor and refund EVERYTHING!
You won’t regret it :)

Barrylocke89

From what I’ve heard people say about it, it sounds like the Debt system isn’t quite as bad as it initially sounds. But I don’t think that’ll stop people, especially reviewers, from being miffed by it initially.

shuyai

i wonder what if you just grind at early game or find some kinda of money exploite and save up 20mil then what happen? gameover at chapter 1?

Derek

i don[t think it is possible… that early
however, you need to finish all the chapters to get the complete ending…

PragmaticSoul

I can see it now.

Government: “You shouldn’t complain about student loan debts, they are meant to ease you into the real world!”

Izzeltrioum

People, don’t get discouraged by this. Nova is such a hell of a cutie so it wasn’t that boresome.

This mechanic is plot-related anyway. And besides, those Gigantos grant generous amounts of Gald. Btw, I paid the whole 20m before finishing the game by fetch-quest grinding. It took me nearly 20-30 hours. It’s something I don’t recommend doing except if you want the Item-for-Everyone skill of Leia’s.

And of course it was also for Cat-finding issues. There’s one cat per map/field/dungeon/cat fetch, so go get ‘em all.

Zalin

I must say I was not a fan of xilia’s cast, but ludger looks pretty damn cool. Maybe I will get into this one more then i did the first.

disgaea36

Are people complaining already?? the games not even out yet chillax! I’m pretty sure this is not your first rpg game. Sounds like its gonna be fun and an upgrade to xillia and if the debt system is anything like evolution worlds I’m ready lol.

KrazyBean

Or it’s just a way to pad out the game…there is only one story in this it seems, so it should be half as long as the first game.

Ladius

That doesn’t really mean much, Xillia’s scenarios were very similar despite some unique and interesting events, and the second one you played with the Grade bonus unlocked was far shorter than the first one, especially since most of the optional contents had already been completed the first time.

Xillia 2 seems to have far more optional contents than Xillia too, the character chapters alone are apparently almost as long as the main quest, and that’s just part of the sub events and quests. There are also multiple endings this time.

KrazyBean

…Yeah, fair enough.

I know a lot of critics are gonna take points off the game because of this debt system though, I guarantee it…with another negative being the reuse of a lot of assets from the first game. But whatever. I’ve got the collector’s edition pre-ordered and I’m pretty stoked for it still.

Alestaos

Apparently this game was better than the first so it cant be that restrictive and its bound to reuse assests from Xillia its a sequel. Other games like X-2 and 13-2/3 did as well yet they didnt get flack for it. Im playing for the story and what i think to be a good installment into the Tales of series.
Cant wait for Hearts R i wish we had a release date for
that too ^^

Fox

So… Is there not a linear main quest?

Freud_Hater

Yes there is (I imported and played the game) and it is an awesome one, I can tell you.

Nu Blitz

i would hope so. Xillia sucked but the only reason imma buy this one is cause i remember alot of ppl said this one is way better. hope those werent lies

Ying

As long as we don’t get “eased in” to slowly, I’m fine with that. I know I have the habit of just wandering off and getting lost for hours on end if I don’t take the time to get familiar with the areas of the game and just rune off

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